There's a couple of ways of specifying the columns to fetch in a Zend_Db_Select. The following two product the same SQL
$select = $db->select()
->from('myTable', array())
->columns(array('TotalRecords' => new Zend_Db_Expr('COUNT(*)')));
$select = $db->select()
->from('myTable', array('TotalRecords' => new Zend_Db_Expr('COUNT(*)')));
The from method takes a first argument, the table name, and a second argument, an array of columns to fetch. If you're using an expression, you can specify a 'key' => Expr.
It's really easy to convert a Zend_Db_Select into a SQL string for debugging or use with other functions.
echo $select; // prints SELECT COUNT(*) AS `TotalRecords` FROM `myTable`
This uses a toString method, which is called automatically by Zend_Db fetch methods:
$total = $db->fetchOne($select);
echo $total; //prints the number of rows matching the query
Where $db is an instance of Zend_Db.